Fergal Murphy appointed MD of Accenture Digital

Accenture has appointed Fergal Murphy as a managing director within Accenture’s Digital business in Australia and New Zealand.

He will be focused on creating value for clients by combining Accenture’s artificial intelligence and analytics offerings with deep industry expertise, the company said.

Murphy has spent more than twenty years building innovative businesses, from start-ups to new corporate divisions. Prior to joining Accenture, he led the IBM Watson Industry Platforms unit and has extensive experience working across industries to improve his clients’ digital and analytics capabilities.

Accenture is aiming to capitalise on the increase in companies investing in digital “data plus design” approaches that achieve both customer experience and productivity improvements. The appointment reflects Accenture’s strategic priorities and commitment to having a market-leading analytics and artificial intelligence capability.

“The areas of artificial intelligence and analytics are growing rapidly,” said Amit Bansal, Accenture Digital’s Applied Intelligence Lead for Australia and New Zealand. “I am excited that someone of Fergal’s calibre has joined Accenture and am confident that he will deliver innovative solutions for our clients.”

Murphy has worked in Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific, in industries as diverse as natural resources, financial services and government.

Which-50 recently spoke with Bansal about Accenture’s view on the impact of artificial intelligence.

“If you apply AI across the business processes, we are predicting by 2022 globally revenues should be boosted by 38 per cent for firms that adopt AI. We are also expecting employment to increase by 10 per cent for those companies that invest in AI, and it will have a measured impact on their EBIDTA as well,” Bansal said.

As well as technology implementations, Accenture’s services also aim to address training and reskilling of workers in the future.

“Our view is that jobs will be reconfigured rather than removed and displaced. New jobs will be created, but what you also need to think about is, ‘how do you retrain and reskill those people into the new tasks?’”

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